


The First Annual Defenders Secret Santa

by Sholio



Category: The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Holidays, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-22 18:59:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17065310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Jessica really hates this team thing sometimes. (Except in all the ways she doesn't.)





	The First Annual Defenders Secret Santa

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maidenjedi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maidenjedi/gifts).



"You want to do what, now."

"Secret Santa," Danny says, grinning hopefully at Jessica as he shakes a coffee cup at her. "I mean, we're all friends now --" Debatable, Jessica thinks. "-- and we're all here in New York this year and alive --" with a glance at Matt, "-- and that's never really happened before, so I put all our names in this cup. Pick one?"

"What if I get me?"

"Then you draw again. C'mon."

"Yeah, c'mon, Jess," Luke says, perched on the back of Matt's couch, the traitor. He waves a slip of paper at her. "We're all doing it. Don't break the kid's heart."

"Matt can't read them," she tries again.

"I pricked each slip of paper with a pin so it says our names in Braille, so he can," Danny says brightly.

Damn it. That's actually ... really thoughtful, not that she's going to admit it. "Fine," she says, exasperated, and takes a slip of paper. Opens it. Stares at it. "I got me. Null and void."

"No she didn't," says Luke promptly.

"Hey!" Danny protests. "Secret! _Secret_ Santa! Hush!"

"Narc," Jessica says, glaring at Luke. "Well, now that we all know who _you_ got." But Danny's already whisked the cup away from her and presented it to Matt, so okay, _fine._ She waits hopefully to see if either Matt or Danny got themselves, which will give her another opportunity to convince everyone that this is a terrible idea, that this is exactly the sort of activity that's just going to make them all fight and widen the barely-patched cracks between them. It'll be worse than spending the holidays with Trish's family. But no such luck.

They aren't even a team. They're just a bunch of random people who don't even get along, who occasionally happen to get together to kick the ass of someone too big and mean for any one of them to ass-kick on their own.

Just a bunch of random people who meet up for drinks sometimes, and have pizza at Matt's place, and visit each other in the hospital ...

... Shit. Maybe they _are_ a team.

 _This_ is why she hates holidays.

 

***

 

"I need to talk to you," Jessica says, and Karen Page jumps a foot in the air, papers flying everywhere in the dirty slush on the sidewalk outside Nelson's Meats.

Jessica helps her pick them up. "Sorry. I didn't know you didn't know I was there."

"That's what happens when you lurk outside the door after hours," Karen tells her, rearranging the stack of slightly damp paperwork in her arms. "You're lucky my hands were full. I might've shot you."

"You have a gun?" Jessica is reluctantly impressed. But then, if she'd only ever known Trish as the pretty face on the "Trish Talk" subway ads, she'd have assumed Trish is the nice girl-next-door type she looks like, too.

"Always," Karen says. "Walk me to my car? I gotta run, I have an appointment."

"At seven in the evening?"

"Nelson, Page, and Murdock never sleep," Karen says, and adds in a TV announcer voice, "We're up all night working hard for you!"

"Yes," Jessica says with a sigh, "I've seen that travesty of an ad. You should sue whoever you hired to make it."

"It's gotten us some clients, though. What did you want to talk about?"

"Matt." Jessica gets that far and then hesitates.

"Broad topic."

"Hmm. Yes. I seem to be ..." Jessica catches herself tugging on her hair, an old nervous habit from childhood, and makes herself stop. "There's this stupid secret Santa, I'm participating only under duress, and --"

"Oh, you got _Matt?"_ Karen says in an amused squeak. She chokes and is clearly trying very hard to force her face straight. "Oh. I see. How nice for you! I am so sorry."

"Matt's told you all about it," Jessica says resignedly.

"Yeah, he talked over his assignment with us. Me and Foggy. But I'm not telling who _he_ got, so don't even ask."

Okay, Jessica thinks, she doesn't have to ask; she's a detective, she can figure this out. She knows Luke got her, which means Matt must have either Danny or Luke -- no, Danny couldn't have himself, that wouldn't work. So Matt has Danny and Danny has Luke ... _all_ of which sounds mildly dirty. She blinks herself out of that thought.

"Anyway," Karen says, "I'd love to help you, but I don't even know what _I'm_ going to get him. Apparently he and Foggy have a long history of giving each other gag gifts, so you may as well not bother looking for help from that direction."

"Oh, is that where the 'I'm Not Daredevil' sweater came from?"

"Yes, and also Foggy's 'Butchers Do It With Meat' mug, which I keep having to hide behind the fax machine when clients come over."

"Don't ask Foggy for help. Got it."

 

***

 

It's two days 'til Christmas and Jessica really _must_ be desperate to be standing up on the roof of her building in driving sleet. The number that she sneakily obtained from Matt's phone simply went to a default voicemail message; the text went unanswered. So here she is, doing this the hard way. 

"Help," she calls into the night. "Help help, I'm being attacked. Someone, help. Anyone."

"I'm an assassin, not a vigilante like you people," says a voice from behind her. "That won't work on me."

Jessica turns around slowly, hands loose at her sides. The Black Sky is standing on the parapet. It's somehow a relief that she's dressed for the weather, with her hair tucked up under a red knit hat and a long black coat over her swords; Jessica appreciates that even the undead get cold in a New York December.

"And yet you're here," Jessica says. "I see you got my text."

Elektra shrugs, smooth and rippling. "Maybe you're my latest job."

Jessica loosens up her stance, the way Danny's taught her; they've all been getting fighting lessons from the one person on the (not a) team who's actually had formal training. "I'll be happy to hand your ass to you, again, but before we do that, I need ideas for a Christmas present for Murdock."

Elektra stares at her with cool dark eyes, as if trying to figure out if Jessica is having her on. Jessica gauges the distance to the fire escape and any convenient nearby bits of masonry, just in case. Finally Elektra says, "You called me out in a snowstorm to talk about Christmas presents for Matt?"

"I know, I don't believe it either. And I'm freezing my ass off up here. There's coffee and booze in my office if you want to come down."

"No," Elektra says slowly, after another blank moment.

Oh well, she tried. There goes her one friendly overture of the season. "Okay, so, Murdock's gift list. C'mon, you've known him since forever. "

"Matt and I weren't a gift-giving kind of couple," Elektra says.

"You must have _some_ ideas. What would you give him?"

"The severed heads of his enemies."

Well, she _did_ ask. "Nah, I prefer giving severed heads for Easter. It's more seasonally appropriate."

Elektra gives her a thoughtful look, draws a sword and idly twirls it. "Then I can't help you."

"I'd already figured out that you're no help at all, yes." Jessica does not get stabbed for this, but she also doesn't turn her back until she's at the opposite edge of the roof. Then she adds, "You can always come down for that drink if you want." And she jumps onto the fire escape.

Elektra does not come down for a drink, but Jessica leaves the open whiskey bottle and a clean glass on her desk, and in the morning she doesn't think it's her imagination that the bottle is two fingers lower and the glass has been neatly washed and put back in place.

 

***

 

The get-together for the gift exchange is on Christmas Eve at noon, at Matt's place which has become their default hangout spot since he has plenty of room and is centrally located. 

Jessica braces herself beforehand to be ambushed by a Christmas party, but to her relief, all that she finds when she gets there (fashionably late, with a slim package tucked under her coat) is the other three hanging out with coffee, tea, and takeout boxes. There are wreaths and Christmas lights hanging up, which could not possibly have been Matt; she decides to blame some combination of Danny, Nelson, and Page.

"I'm going to hope we're not all here alone because our lives are just that sad," Jessica says, pouring half a cup of coffee for herself and filling the other half with rum from Matt's liquor cabinet. "Plans for the day?"

"I'm going over to Claire's mom's place after this," Luke says.

"Hanging out with Ward 'til Colleen finishes up with the center's Christmas party," Danny says.

Matt shrugs and looks slightly embarrassed. "Foggy always has me and Karen over to his folks' place."

"What about you?" Luke asks Jessica.

"Trish," she says without elaborating. 

She and Trish are still working their way to a good place, not quite there yet, but ... they're getting there. Maybe. Sort of. She's not sure, yet, if Trish will be happy if Jessica turns up on her doorstep. She hasn't even decided for sure if she's going to. But she thinks she might try, assuming this gift exchange isn't a total disaster and she doesn't decide to get drunk in her office instead.

Danny -- who is wearing one of the most garish Christmas sweaters she's ever seen -- waves a box wrapped in glittery paper. "Gift exchange? We're all here now. Yes?"

Jessica sighs and drops her little offering in Matt's lap. Then she turns around and almost runs smack into Luke's (very soft-looking) sweater. He grins and hands her a box. "Merry Christmas, Jess," he says, and his voice is gentle enough that she manages to look up and meet his eyes, briefly. He looks so huggable, covered in fuzzy sweater, that it should be illegal.

Instead, she sits on the end of the couch and they all hold their packages and stare at each other. Just as Jessica is wondering how seasonally inappropriate it would be to cue up the theme from _The Good, the Bad and the Ugly_ on her phone, Danny says, "Now!" and tears into his. So they all do too, and gift wrapping showers all over the place.

Jessica pulls out a fluffy black sweater. It's incredibly soft, looks very warm, and she thinks gloomily that it will probably fit her exactly. It's perfect for sneaking around on rooftops without freezing. It's thoughtful and well selected. Thanks for setting the bar high, Luke.

She looks up. Danny seems delighted with his new nunchucks (betting pool on how long it takes those to end up embedded in a lamp, Jessica thinks), Luke is laughing at a book titled _The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k_ (asterisks included), and Matt ...

Matt has now opened up her little wrapped and folded card and is running his fingertips over it. She got the idea from Danny (though she's not telling him that): with the Internet being a thing, there is absolutely no reason why a person who doesn't know Braille, armed with a sewing needle, can't handwrite a careful message that only Matt can read.

"What's it say?" Danny asks, leaning over.

"It's personal," Matt says with a slight smile, and folds it up again.

What it says is -- if she got everything right and didn't fuck up, anyway -- is "IOU one (1) completely nonjudgmental evening for an activity of your choice."

"And I mean it," Jessica says. The fact that it looks like this is absolutely killing Luke and Danny with curiosity is, by far, the best part of the whole day as far as she's concerned.

It's almost worth getting dragged into a group hug a little later. Almost.


End file.
